Søra Kuromoto
Søra Chikara Kuromoto is a player character with a current arc. In all universes, she is the eldest daughter of Søren Kuromoto and Heti Soterede Kuromoto, and the older sister of Eles Kuromoto and Teli Kuromoto. In the Prime Universe, her identity is owned by her clone, and the original Søra goes by the name of Skye Tenlis. She was born in July of 2128, and graduated from Star Navy Academy in 2150. Personality Søra is, in all universes, an extrovert and a natural athlete with a good mind and insufficient patience. She possesses intuitive talent in tactics and leadership, but actually doesn’t enjoy being a commissioned officer or military leader as a profession. She has a (usually) secret love of animals and biology, but is generally discouraged from these pursuits due to her natural aptitudes and her father’s pride. She is fiercely loyal to individuals, and easily loses sight of her duty to larger organizations, though she will protect her planet and people when the threat is clear. She often plays it tough, and due to her father’s desire for a son, she was a tomboy as a little girl; as a result she seldom cries or allows herself to appear vulnerable, but has enormous blind spots and doesn’t always know her own mind very well. She is effortlessly cool, usually popular wherever she goes, and often fits in as “one of the guys” almost instantaneously. A laugh or a joke comes easily to her lips, but she lies quite often about how she feels, even to herself. Søra has several latent personality traits, talents and tendencies which were not nurtured during her formative years the Prime Universe. She likes to have things or people to care for, and will sublimate her own problems and gladly deal with theirs, even behaving more functionally if allowed to do so. She has a strong capacity for extreme self-sacrifice, an extension of her self-destructive tendencies, and she has the capacity to identify strongly with an organization or cause in extremis, especially after great trauma or other powerful alterations to her mind or environment. She has a good hand for drawing and has always been interested in nature, and she is good with animals and plants, as she likes having things and creatures to take care of. She also has a strong tendency toward violence, whether it be toward herself or others, and her physicality tends to make violence and aggression one of the ways in which she solves problems. Relationships Søra gravitates toward a friendship with the Barca twins in most universes, particularly with Cassidy Barca. She has always wanted a twin herself, and regards the Barcas as her “real” siblings. Like her, the Barca twins have a military legacy to match and natural talent, they are effortlessly cool and popular, and she has known them since they were children. Søra dislikes her younger sisters, mostly because she resents them; Eles has been allowed to pursue science, and Teli has been allowed emotional vulnerability. As a result she mocked Eles’s interests, acting as though science is stupid, and she was a first-rate emotional bully to Teli, getting angry with her for crying and yelling at her whenever Teli followed her older sister and her friends around as children. In the Prime Universe, she deeply regrets the failure of her relationships with her sisters and views it as yet another wasted opportunity to have good things in her life. Søra’s relationship with her father is eternally complicated. He has invested a lot of his hopes, pride and dreams into her, but their personalities have always been little alike. Søra has essentially had the ill-luck of being his first-born child, and both of them know she would likely have been much happier had she been allowed to grow outside of her father’s shadow, though they don’t usually admit this aloud. He has trained and taught her from infancy to be his namesake and to someday command a Star Destroyer, but he hasn’t shared many of his passions with her, as Søra was never much interested in stars or distant peoples and cultures; she was always looking at the grass and trees around her. As a result of this mismatch, Søra has always felt like a disappointment, like the “wrong” daughter, and has guiltily acquiesced to being what her father wants her to be, but she has also resisted it in a number of self-destructive ways. On the ERS Medusa, Søra’s clone has had some measure of a second chance at making good relationships with crew members. Though she is fiercely loyal and honest with him, Patton Abrashoff is probably the first real friend she’s made since childhood, partly because she has been determined to maintain and safeguard that relationship with constant honesty and steadfastness on the bridge. If one considers her relationships from her original’s life not quite “hers,” her relationships on the Medusa are the first she’s ever really made herself. This makes Patton her first friend, just as the Barcas were her first friends in her former life, which goes a long way toward explaining the fierceness of that friendship on her side. Appearance Sora is generally considered the prettiest of her three sisters, but her features lack softness or gentleness; she has a hard jaw, quicker and more mocking eyes than generally makes people feel comfortable, and more muscle than curves. She is short like the other Kuromoto girls, but taller than her sisters or mother. She has hazel eyes like her mother, and straight auburn hair. In the Prime Universe, she wears a black coat like other members of Command, hers falling below her hips, and tall black boots. Name Søra is named for her father, Søren. Though both names possess a Swedish vowel and should be pronounced “Suren” and “Sura,” they are family names and receive the more Japanese pronunciation “Soren” and “Sora.” Though “Søren” is derived from “Thor” and means “thunder,” the Japanese word “sora” means “sky.” Søra’s middle name is Chikara, which is Japanese for “strength” or power. The last name Kuromoto is an ancient one in Japan; however, this particular Kuromoto family were once known as Kuromori, which means “Black Forest.” When they left their home and its dark trees, they changed their name to Kuromoto, leaving out “mori,” but the implication is historically “originated in the Black Forest.” Its cognate, however, is “dark origins,” and that works well for the Kuromoto family, who now strive to live most of their lives in space or take part in Black Ops. Prime Universe Søra’s parents met while serving on an early Daimajin-class ship, her father a commissioned officer, and her mother a civilian scientist. Before they even thought about marriage, they had gotten pregnant with Søra, and quickly wed each other while on leave. Søra was born two weeks early in the Medical Bay while her parents were still deployed, an early mark of her inveterate impatience. When she was weaned, her parents sent her to live with her grandparents on Earth; shortly thereafter, the Kuromotos were pregnant with Eles. Søra met and befriended Cassidy and Hayden Barca when they were in elementary school, and they remained together—and friends—right up through Star Navy Academy. The children of military families and all high performers, Søra and the Barcas were the cool kids wherever they went, though they were often followed around by Søra’s little sister Teli. At the Academy, Søra’s grades and academic competitiveness dropped noticeably. Though she possessed natural talent and an intuitive understanding of many required officer subjects, she chronically underperformed and refused to study, never scoring as high as her instructors expected she could if she applied herself. Instead she threw herself into various athletic clubs, excelling in martial arts, archery, and marksmanship; when other students were studying for exams and fighting over the simulator, she could often be found in the gun range practicing her aim. It was at the academy that she gained an infamous reputation for promiscuity, though it was overblown by her own fanning and boasting; Søra only slept with about 10% of the male students she claimed to have, and these were in friendly one-time encounters. One of her instructors described her as “willfully self-destructive, a student who would make a fine officer if she could believe it of herself.” Word reached the ERS Hydra, then under her father’s command, of her antics and underperformance, but Søren was too disturbed by the idea of his daughter’s promiscuity to formulate a credible response. Søra graduated among the top 10% of her class, after pulling herself together in the last semester. She received an assignment to the ERS Omacatl under Captain Sun, an older captain sometimes termed “the Catfish” among the recruits and cadets for his mustache. The Omacatl bridge was, before the First Praezorian War, considered the most boring of assignments because it often had patrol duty and its captain was old, cautious and unadventurous. The Hydra was set to deploy on the day of her graduation, so her godmother Havilah Mort and her mother took a leave from the ship, missing its deployment; as captain, however, Søren had to stay with his ship. While Søra and the Barcas were graduating in June 2150, the Hydra disappeared into hyperspace after the ERSN’s first encounter with the Praezorians. Søra and the Barca twins then joined their ships in the flurry of a beginning war, with the Hydra MIA. On the Omacatl bridge, Søra immediately found herself out of her depth; uncertain of her father’s whereabouts and worried he might be dead, and unprepared for the rigors of war on her first day, she found herself paralyzed with indecision and prone to stupid mistakes. The ship’s XO, Commander Sith Loren, immediately took her under his wing; before long he was pressuring her for a sexual relationship, and Søra was both grateful for his help and unwilling to jeopardize her position with her father still missing, so she went along with it. Things went along this way for six months, until Søra’s father emerged from hyperspace with the ERS Hydra, and she took a leave from the Omacatl to see him. The family had already had a formal Buddhist funeral after he had been declared dead by the ERSN, and they were stunned when he emerged alive. Søren, however, didn’t come back entirely right; his bridge was exposed to space (and hyperspace) and his officers experienced horrific physical, emotional, and mental effects as a result. Søren lost 85% use of his legs and had his heart replaced, but he refused to receive cybernetic limbs. Worse, however, was the obsessive bitterness and rage he built up as his bridge officers went insane and died around him. Søra and her father had a wall-shaking fight during her visit to his hospital, which resulted in Søra walking out and returning early to the Omacatl, where she rejected the attentions of Loren and composed video letters to Hayden and Cassidy until her shift began. Søra performed well and her coercive relationship with Commander Loren continued until the truce that ended the First Praezorian War in 2151, and the surprise attack that began the Second Praezorian War in Fall 2151. In 2152, as Escort production ramped up, she was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and given a reassignment to the ERS Heracles, a new Escort-class ship, to act as its CO. She excitedly told her news to Commander Loren, who grew furious that she was leaving, demanded she reject the reassignment and let slip that he’d hoped “some accident” would make him captain of the Omacatl soon, at which point he’d wanted her for his XO. Søra grew disgusted with him and the implication that he might arrange an accident for Captain Sun, but she did not report him or say anything about their relationship, even when given a chance to come clean by the captain before leaving. She traveled to One Republic Shipyard and discovered that “irregularities” in her record had resulted in the assignment of the Heracles going to another Lieutenant, and she was instead being assigned to Admin and Logistics. Loren had gotten his revenge, it seemed. Søra was then relegated to a desk for a year, and it saved her life--at Operation Earth Mover in the fall of 2152, the Omacatl was destroyed with all hands. When she heard about the Medusa Project to rehabilitate the ERS Medusa, Søra eagerly joined. Anything to get back into space and rehabilitate her reputation. What Søra did not realize was that this year at a desk didn’t occur. After she’d lost the Heracles, her father—now promoted to admiral and assigned to Black Ops—offered her a chance to be useful in service to the Star Navy. Eager to get back into her own good graces, Søra accepted. Søren had an imprint of her memories and DNA made by cloning and genetics expert Terra Thorn, who agreed to make a clone of Søra if she died. From there, Søra went deep undercover on Sirius Base, in an action against one of the base’s most powerful crime lords. In an explosion during this operation, Søra lost her arm, and her father ordered that she be given a cybernetic replacement while she was still in a coma. To protect her from the Sirius crime lords (who might have discovered who she was), he had her records reflect erroneously that she was legally dead, planning to correct this once she was recovered and on a new assignment. However, this record change prompted Dr. Thorn to begin a clone of Søra Kuromoto. XO of the ERS Medusa When "Søra Kuromoto" signed up for the Medusa Project, it created a database irregularity; her father, who had her authorization code monitored, was forced to resolve the error by declaring her alive, while he knew that his daughter was still recovering from her injuries and learning how to use her new arm. Upon investigation, he discovered that Dr. Thorn had moved ahead on the clone, and was accompanying "Søra" onto the partially-restored ERS Medusa. Hoping it would get her out of the way while he figured out what to do, Søren did not fight the action or reveal what had happened, partially motivated by the hope of keeping his wife in the dark about their daughter's cloning. Søra was second-ranking officer on the Medusa, and was therefore informed that she was XO; however, her immune system was not quite fully developed and she grew ill with mononucleosis during her first days in space, and was unable to carry out her duties for a couple weeks. During her first few days properly on the job, the ship's CO, Commander Abrashoff, was commandeered by an alien species, and Søra took partial command of the ship, rejecting the aliens in order to keep someone unaffected at the helm. She was frightened but honest with Patton when he returned to normal, revealing that she was terrified of being in command. When the Medusa discovered the Cadalians, Søra eagerly embraced their culture and technology, and took their Trials of the Warrior to be inducted into that strata of society. She supported Patton when he offered himself to assist with the funeral of the Cadalian colonists, and took over the ship's operations while he recovered. During that time, she learned all she could about Cadalian Irken, learning enough in a short time to design and grow novel Irken for the Medusa. She also helped collect small Irken to be part of the ship's personnel, and learned how to use the Hyperspace Organ and Tassat Launcher. She received twenty-five Warfliers and enthusiastically began to train them as teams to hunt and catch. She hopes to someday return to Cadalia and learn more about their history, society, and technology, and to determine why they are genetically identical to humans. After the ship assisted the Cadalians with the Dead, Søra and Patton agreed that the Earth Republic should know about the Dead as soon as possible, and receive information about the technology they'd acquired and the people they'd met. They also agreed that Stranger Protocol might flag the Medusa as dangerous or "scientifically interesting," and that they might lose the ship or parts of it before they could complete their mission. Still too eager to prove themselves, they hatched a plan to drop off a pod full of information at Xi Bootis before returning to Zeta Tucanae and carrying on with their mission. Unfortunately, they ran from the garrison at Xi Bootis and alarmed the rest of the ship; as a result, Specialist Kaino Qinisa hobbled the ship before they could run any further. The ERS Fomorian caught up with them, carried out Stranger Protocol, and sent them on their way. As they carried on, the Medusa discovered that the Ginali homeworld at Ixion was being attacked by the Dead. After destroying the remaining Dead ships, the Medusa took stock of the substantial damage to the planet, and went home to acquire aid. In its second deployment, the Medusa returned with a fleet of military, civilian and Cetian ships to assist, study, and protect the Ginali. When sectarian conflict over the Medusa's intervention began to foment, Søra raided a government building with five officers in combat armor, and stopped a developing hostage crisis. She abruptly realized, however, that the terrorists' assertions that the Medusa crew were invading aliens was true, and she had just volunteered as evidence. Over the course of the her service to the Medusa, clone Søra--only a few years old in reality--has had the chance to become a different person, with a second lease on life. It was revealed to her that she is a clone, but Søra (raised originally as a Buddhist) believes her original body died and that she reincarnated. She is thankful for this second life, and determined to make the best of it. She is following up her original passion for biology as she learns about and creates new Irken, and the practice--both technical and artistic--has given her great satisfaction. Still, there is something dark lurking just around the bend at all times. Søra's mind is not entirely her own; she has memories from her old life which she describes as distant and not quite real, and she is not always sure how she feels about them, or about who she was. Thinking about her time on the Omacatl makes her sick, even physically ill, and she avoids it; she has mostly blocked out Loren's oblique references to killing their captain, and tries not to think about the loss of the entire ship, though she has revealed what she does know and think to Patton. She regrets the way she treated her sisters, and feels overall that she wasted nearly everything good in her life. Moreover, Søra's mind has been undoubtedly conditioned at some point--she does not question Terra Thorn, and thinks of her as benevolent and good, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. The conflict between this conditioned relationship and a real one, as between Dr. Thorn's interests and loyalty to Captain Abrashoff, has never been brought to a crisis. Søra does not know not to trust herself, but she senses that the people around her trust her less since they found out she is a clone. XO of the ERS Maelstrom After she served as XO for over two years, Søra was tapped to act as XO on the ERS Maelstrom for a temporary deployment, in order to test the ship and perform reconnaissance runs against the Z. As she had attended academy with its CO, Captain Ash Cai, and they were of an age, the admiralty believed it would be a strong match for the volatile captain. Søra traveled home on April 8th, 2156 on a courier ship, and transferred to the Maelstrom. There they reviewed its capabilities and Søra began running the newly-assembled crew (many of them Cai's old crew from the ERS Valkyrie) through a set of tests. The following afternoon, the Z perpetrated an attack against Earth and destroyed the ERS Kraken and Fomorian at Delta Pavonis. Søra Kuromoto and Winter Matsumoto manned the weapons and shields/helm respectively as Ash Cai ordered them forward to protect KapStar. The attack had already taken place, however, and after saving only one person, KapStar was destroyed. It was Søra who assembled the crew to inform them that the base had been destroyed, while she herself was in numb shock and disbelief, not sure if her father had been there nor how many people she had known in another life might now be dead. As the Maelstrom pushed forward to find the second Howl ship that attacked the Earth Republic, Søra threw herself into her duties as a battle XO and weapons tech, even suggesting to Captain Cai that they threaten the Z at Lyra with a planet-killing asteroid. Søra reported later that she had never felt so clear, so like herself and yet finally focused, purposeful, unquestioning. She quickly turned merciless, cold, and calculating, caring little about negotiating or being friendly with the Z, even forcing the defeated Lyran Z to return the second part of the Earth Republic motto over the comms, in order to humiliate them. She liked serving under Captain Cai and felt strangely close to the Maelstrom crew, who learned she was a clone and barely batted an eyelash; they cared little about anything beyond her ability to do her job. However, Søra feels that whatever fragile identity she has managed to create, which belongs to her and only to her, rests entirely on the ERS Medusa. XO of the ERS Takshaka and Fleet Coordinator of VZ Day When the Crimson Tide crisis forced Captain Brown of the ERS Hydra to stay at Cygnus and send another captain forward with the offensive line, he arranged for the ERS Takshaka to be repaired quickly at Tau Ceti and brought in to finish his orders. When it did so, Ash Cai transferred his flag from the Maelstrom at Lyra to the Takshaka, bringing much of his stalwart crew, as well as Søra to act as his XO. As Lieutenant-Commander, Søra was authorized and trained as a fleet coordinator, placing her at DAISS to command the ERS Kara and ERS Argo as the offensive fleet rolled forward to Phoenix Alpha and then to the Z homeworld at Mu'Are. There, Søra and Captain Ash Cai finished off the Z fleet, including what remained of its incomplete ships, and brought the Z to the table. Søra continued to push for more aggressive treatment of the Z, but Captain Cai proved more circumspect, demanding instead that the Z reject and abjure their warrior class, and become protectorates of the Earth Republic. Return to the ERS Medusa After VZ Day, Søra was transferred back to the ERS Medusa to assist with rescue efforts in the Sol System. Returning centered her again, but she is somewhat afraid of herself, feeling as though her mind has betrayed her, and that there is someone inside of her that she doesn't want to be. She was powerfully affected by the experience of serving with Captain Cai and the December Universe crewmembers who once served aboard the ERS Valkyrie, and shared with Ash some of her feelings about being a copy of herself--and possibly a better version, with a greater mission. At their parting, she asked Captain Cai how her counterpart in the December Universe died at the Battle of Earth, and received a short account--this helped her to conceive of how she herself may have died in the Prime Universe and come to terms with it. The experience also helped her to further incorporate and own the entire identity of Søra Kuromoto, with all its virtues and its vices, while also resolving to make good on the second chance she was given at life by learning from her mistakes and devoting herself to the defense of mankind as well as its alliances with other friendly species. Søra was transferred back aboard the Medusa alongside her old friend Cassidy Barca, providing a nice chance for them to catch up and reconnect. Cassidy's transfer has, however, presented some identity problems for Søra, who subconsciously switches demeanors and "memory sets" when speaking with Cassidy as opposed to Patton Abrashoff or other long-serving Medusa crewmembers. Cassidy's presence and certain discussions also prompt memory disturbances and affective cascades, which sometimes physically sicken Søra; as a result, she sometimes avoided Cassidy or intentionally alternated shifts with her on the bridge. Søra also intentionally hid these disturbances from Dr. Thorn, worried that they were bad news for her somehow as a clone and unwilling to admit that her identity was splitting and unable to fully incorporate. Cøra Hikari Kuromoto Søra at last experienced a full personality split after learning from Cassidy Barca that her original, now known as Skye Tenlis, was still alive. Realizing that she was not a continuity from Søra and that she had not reincarnated, she partially lost her ability to cope with the stresses and traumas of the Z attack and her own inability to completely incorporate her memory and most troublesome adult personality traits. As a result, those memories and traits coalesced to create an alternate, a one-dimensional, hyper-aggressive, alcoholic and nymphomaniacal personality, marginally similar to Søra during her college days and incorporating many of her more grandiose desires and fantasies about herself. "Søra" appears to protect the younger, newer personality of the clone, which has been dominant on the Medusa until this point--she claims for instance that she took over on the Maelstrom to help the clone survive. However, she is also aggressive to the clone personality and believes that it is the alternate. This is borne out by the fact that both sides have occasional memory blackouts, suggesting neither is quite the conventional host personality in a garden variety case of DPD. In order to differentiate and further establish herself, hopefully to regain control, the clone personality has named herself Cøra Hikari Kuromoto, which further convinces "Søra" that she is the host personality and the clone is an alternate, grown on top of her own artificially-suppressed memories and personality in order to make the clone more submissive and malleable. Cøra is working desperately to create and strengthen anchors in order to keep herself present (thus preventing blackouts and problematical switching to "Søra") and is trying to fully incorporate the traumatized, adult, and sometimes sickening memories and personality traits of Søra Kuromoto. Etymologically, Cøra is derived from Latin cor, which means "heart"; Søra's clone personality chose it for its similarity to her original name, even preserving the familial accented quirk, but also to assert herself as the core or host personality, the owner of her own body. Hikari is Japanese for "light," and is similar in sound to Søra's middle name, Chikara, or strength. Cøra chose Hikari to further differentiate herself and her priorities, stating that she chooses enlightenment and illuminated guidance over strength. "Søra" Søra as Cøra's alternate is a conglomeration of her memories from Søra's life before the cloning, and appears to have some strange mental connections to Skye's life post-cloning (such as a lunatic reaction to a gingerbread cookie with its arm missing). Though she was one-dimensional at her first appearance, Søra has evolved and adapted quickly in an effort to ascertain what is happening to her, and why she is there. She has confessed to Cassidy Barca that she remembers much of what happens when Cøra is active, and that she believes she is there to break the clone free of Dr. Thorn's control. Søra believes that she as a clone has been forcefully "babyfied" to make her easier to influence, and that she (the native personality) has been actively suppressed until traumatic warfare made it necessary that she come forward to survive. She also believes she is there to help Cassidy, who is in crisis, and to protect the ship from the clone's controlled personality. She is conscious while they are sleeping (she is essentially the person in control when they dream), and she has been showing Cøra entire unfolded days from her life, making her familiar with every detail and trying to make their shared memories real for her. "Søra" is still hypersexual and hyperaggressive; she loves Cassidy but is scared to death for her, she cares for Patton but resents his reserve, she likes and drinks with Qinisa, and she despises Dr. Thorn. She finds irken disgusting. She still believes herself to be the core personality in her clone, but has many issues from her adult life that she is trying and failing to get ahold of, and she feels the crew dislikes her presence, which she finds troubling--in her view, she is far more adult and capable than Cøra. It is unclear why she appears to react badly to cookies without arms. Skye Tenlis The name "Skye Tenlis" is a secret correlative to Søra's real name, for someone who knows her family well enough to read its meaning. "Skye" is a reference to the fact that Søra's name is pronounced as a cognate for the Japanese word for "sky," and "Tenlis"--Russian for "dark forest"--is an oblique reference to the Kuromoto family's original name, Kuromori, and it's meaning ("black forest"). Despite having a fake name and a replacement arm, Skye is the original Søra. Losing her arm and many memories during the process, as well as the traumatic experience of the explosion and everything that led up to it, has made Skye incredibly unstable. Filled with rage and the thwarted desire to redeem herself, Skye was sent by her father to serve on a Taskforce on Earth for a few months while he tried to work out how to deal with her double identity, without telling his half-maddened daughter that she had a clone. There Skye knew she was in a kind of holding pattern, but was distracted by again meeting her oldest and closest friend, Cassidy Barca, who was striken with a hyperspace entity known as Leviathan. Her friend's needs overwhelming her own, Skye began getting her mind back together in order to help her, despite hearing she had a clone who stole her identity and life, and the overwhelming desire to kill that clone and reclaim her name. When Cassidy was given a chance to travel to a monastery in orbit around Tau Ceti to explore and control her connection to Leviathan, Skye went with her, refusing to leave her friend while she was vulnerable. While at the monastery, Skye trained to deal with her rage, her feelings of envy and uselessness, and explored her memories on Sirius Base that resulted in the loss of her arm. She is still not reconciled to the cybernetic arm, and continues to want a biological replacement, despite the combat prowess it lends her. Skye is a much more proficient fighter than her clone counterpart, having trained with Black Ops before and after Sirius Base, and skilled with her cybernetic arm and a long list of munitions. Skye is cynical and bitter, and much more grim than she was before Sirius. However, her time at Tau Ceti has calmed her and made her come to peace with herself, and with her clone. In response, she has decided to reclaim a position on a Star Destroyer and start to rebuild her life with whatever identity she is allowed to possess. As a result, she has partially made it up with her father and has been placed on the bridge of the ERS Fenris under Nell Dorian, in order to join her sister in Skelow Space. She hopes to make up for much of her worst behavior by making it up with Teli, to whom she has been cruel the longest. December Universe In the December Universe, the Star Navy never increased its production of escorts; therefore, there was no new escort for Søra to receive as CO, and hence she wasn’t promoted off the ERS Omacatl. There was no Operation Earth Mover, and the ERS Omacatl continued to be a large part of the war effort. Captain Sun talked to her about promoting her to Lieutenant and sending her to be third officer on the new ERS Manticore, because he had noticed irregularities in her relationship with Commander Sith Loren. However, Commander Loren arranged an “accident” for Captain Sun (as he had been planning) before the captain could act on this information. Loren promoted Søra to Lieutenant, though she had rejected helping him in his power grab, and she became his reluctant XO while their relationship continued. Commander Loren kept Søra under control in this situation due to the fact that she hadn’t warned the captain before Loren acted and hadn’t bothered reporting anything that had been going on, all of which made her look more guilty than she was. Loren’s actions, however, had a deleterious effect on his stability and leadership. He began to behave erratically and had trouble following orders from Command, losing his confidence as the weight of the captain’s death ate away at him and the crew lost trust and confidence in their CO, while Søra grew disgusted and disdainful of him. The December Offensive, which destroyed much of the backbone of the fleet and the Republic, nearly broke him and much of the crew. When the Omacatl was stationed at Mars and the distress call came from Earth during the final battle, Loren broke down completely, refusing to move the ship and losing control of himself. On an instinct, Søra shot him before he could do damage to the hyperdrive. She then took command of the ship with the help of its ensigns and joined the Battle of Earth. There she watched the ERS Hydra, with her mother and her best friend Hayden Barca, as well as the ERS Medusa, with Cassidy aboard, destroyed in the fighting. The Omacatl was destroyed with all souls, going down fighting, and Søra perished with it. December Søra is the most straightforward version of her career following her early decisions, without any cloning, reassignments or other forms of second chances. As such, she was only able to truly make it right and act the hero in the eleventh hour, when she knew she and the Omacatl were unlikely to survive the day. Even in making it right, she resorted to violence instead of order, shooting Loren instead of having him escorted off the bridge or sedated. Her ultimate and only heroic move was to answer the call and steer the Omacatl and its crew to their destruction at Earth’s last stand. Empire Universe